FAITH, FREEDOM AND LAW
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by J. Edgar Hoover
time-proven deterrents to crime. These deterrents — the cer tainty of sure detection, swift ap prehension and realistic treat ment under the law — are essen tial weapons in the battle to pre serve law and order and decency. Yet how many serious obstacles lie in the path o f each — ob stacles ranging from public leth argy and neglect, to weakness, degeneracy and corruption within the ranks of those who tend our delicate machinery of justice! Several months ago, a deeply concerned ju r is t on the West Coast made the profound obser vation that we Americans are witnessing “ a veritable tearing up by the roots of the fundamen tals, the old cornerstones o f the administration of justice.” Every person charged with a crime, “ and particularly the recidivist,” he continued, “knows that the scales are balanced in his favor. Justices and judges . . . seemingly many times make a search for error rather than for truth.” In this search, they have been encouraged and abetted by that peculiar breed of legal advocate who looks upon the criminal court more in terms of a Roman circus than an arena o f truth. I refer to the “ continuance experts,” the habitual browbeaters of wit nesses, the relentless huntsmen of loopholes and technicalities in the law. Those attorneys who have adopted a cavalier attitude to
ward the Canons of Professional Ethics do severe harm not only to the image of the legal profes sion, but to the integrity of our entire system of justice. Consider, for example, the impression con veyed to honest, right-thinking citizens by members of the bar such as the defense attorney who flippantly remarked last year, “ It is the object of the defense to prejudice the minds of all per sons possible. My clients want freedom, not justice.” Since abo lition of the Star Chamber more than 300 years ago, the pendulum has swung a long way. Law and legal proc esses, we have learned, function most judiciously in the light of public knowledge and examina tion. With rare exception today, it is society, rather than the de fendant, which suffers when a curtain o f official censorship de scends around the administration of justice. Look, for example, at the con tradiction-plagued field of youth ful cr im ina lity — where the names of young hoodlums and the disposition of their cases are often shrouded in secrecy, regard less o f the defendant’s previous record or the nature of his crimes. How many teen-aged muggers, robbers and rapists have been prematurely unleashed to resume preying on society under a shield of anonymity — a shield which protects not only dangerous ene mies o f law and order, but also
A m e r ic a o w e s a great debt to the responsible and dedicated members of the legal profession. Ours is a Government of law, not of men. It is the type of society envisioned by William Penn near ly 300 years ago when he spoke o f a land “where the laws rule and the people are a party to those laws.” Today, the enemies of our Re public have grown increasingly defiant, increasingly militant, in creasingly bold. Who are these enemies ? They are forces of vary ing motivation and goals: Com munists and Klansmen; crime syndicates and youthful offen ders ; vice merchants and corrupt politicians; dishonest business men and labor racketeers — all joined and united in mutual con tempt for law, disdain for au thority and disrespect for the teachings o f God. No amount of statistical mum- bo jumbo — nor of refusal to face reality — will remove the spectre of underworld terror and intimi dation from the streets of our country. Nor, despite the Utopian pipe dreams of certain misguided reformers, has an effective sub stitute ever been found for the Condensed from remarks of J. Edga/r Hoover, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, prepared for delivery before the Regional Conference on Crime Prevention of the Michigan State Bar at Rochester, Michigan, June 8, 1967. Used by permission.
THE KING'S BUSINESS
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